


Just The Boy Who's Had Too Many Chances

by morganya



Category: Bandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-13
Updated: 2008-03-13
Packaged: 2017-10-20 06:59:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/210010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morganya/pseuds/morganya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They have to work just a little bit harder to keep the city safe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just The Boy Who's Had Too Many Chances

**Author's Note:**

> Written in the "A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More Touch Me" video universe. Also? That warning? It's there for a reason. Seriously.

They find one out by the shores of the lake, just before three. They'd been on patrol since the sun went down, driving in widening circles. Usually they stick to the more populated areas, to try to see an attack before it actually happened, but no one seems to be out tonight. No one's been out for almost three weeks.

"Andy, pull over," Pete says.

"Where is it?" Andy immediately turns down the high beams.

"Up ahead. On the right."

"It'll see the car," Joe says.

"Who cares if it sees the car? Let it see the car," Pete says. "Let's go."

"How many are there?" Andy turns the motor off.

"Just one."

"You sure?"

"I don't really feel like being surprised," Joe says.

Pete stares at them. His eyes are like huge black quarters. "If you'd like to do your fucking jobs, you can get out of the car now."

"You get _paid_ for jobs," Andy says, but he's opening the door. Joe picks up his gear and follows.

It's crouched over something in the road, hissing and snarling. Andy goes for the sword on his hip; Joe hears the soft slide of metal. Pete shoves his hands in his pockets, strangely casual, but Joe would bet that he's holding himself back, restraining himself from flying at the thing and ripping it apart for their benefit.

The thing looks at them.

It looks like it was maybe seventeen, a skinny kid in ragged jeans and a Saves the Day shirt, brownish-blond hair and bruises on its arms. It's huddled over some other dead thing - a raccoon, a stray cat, something - and its eyes are flat and baffled.

Joe knows from looking at it that they don't have to think about there being any others. They've been seeing these things more and more - strays gone rabid-crazy, staggering through the streets like dogs. Pete says that this can happen - the shock of being dead sets something loose and the kindest thing to do is just to take the things down fast.

Joe draws the hammer of the net gun back and fires.

It whimpers and gurgles, falling backwards, a dark burned hole in its shirt and not even the slightest bit of blood. Pete takes his hands out of his pockets. He's by the thing's side fast, staring down at it, lips drawn back from his teeth. He kicks it with the side of his foot.

"I think you got it," he says. "Hurley, look at this."

"I got it, dude," Joe says.

Pete gives him a look. "Just making sure."

Joe shrugs and starts back for the car. He should be used to it by now, but the sound of Andy's sword slicing through sinew and bone still kind of grosses him out and he'd rather pretend it doesn't happen. Pete says that it's the only way to make sure that the things stay dead this time, they have to cut the fucking heads right off. Joe accepts it but he doesn't have to like it.

He sits in the back seat and waits for them to come back. Andy sheathes the sword before he gets back into the driver's seat and says, "Where are we going now?"

"Go back to West Fullerton," Pete says. "Start over." He flicks his tongue over his teeth, over the fangs, and then bites into the cuticle on his left thumb.

"How're you doing?" Joe says. "We can stop by the warehouse. Grab you something."

Pete looks back at him. There's almost a hint of a tired smile, and Joe feels unreasonably gratified. Then Pete turns his attention elsewhere, craning his head at impossible angles to try to take everything in. "I'll have it later. I'm all right for now."

"You sure about that?" Andy says.

"I wouldn't _say_ it if I wasn't," Pete snaps, and then both Andy and Joe don't say anything else.

They circle around town until just before the sun comes up. Joe thinks about Dirty a lot as they circle, how it was easier when there was someone else patrolling some other part of the city, ready to call them in if anything happened, and how he misses the big idiot. He keeps this to himself. Pete gnaws his fingers and stares out the window. Andy drives.

"Where the fuck are they hiding?" Pete shouts when they get back. Andy quietly takes his place on the couch and Joe stands by the door. Pete never wants an answer, not from them.

Pete starts tossing stuff into the blender and it looks random but probably isn't. "Three fucking weeks. Three weeks of patrol and nothing but fucking strays. This system is _fucked_. We need a new one."

Pete's fingers are raw and red, bitten to the bone. They're already healing but they look like shit. Andy says, "You think they might be spreading out? New territory?"

"They're _here_ ," Pete says. He tilts the pitcher to his lips and gulps, then swipes his arm across his mouth. "Somewhere. You have to start going out in the day, they have to sleep sometime. You have to find them."

"Twenty four hour patrol?" Andy says. "And that's supposed to work better? We barely sleep anyway, Pete. We're somehow going to get more done when it's just two of us, on no sleep at all, and leave you -"

Pete throws the pitcher across the room. Andy has the good sense to duck as it flies by his head, shattering on the wall in a mess of glass and foul-smelling red stuff. Joe flinches and presses his back against the door.

"Go to bed, Pete," Andy says softly. He doesn't move, doesn't blink. "We'll talk when you get up."

Pete sneers. "Don't fucking talk back to me."

"Go to bed," Andy repeats.

Pete goes, slamming the door behind him. Andy looks up at Joe. "He's getting worse."

"I noticed," Joe says. "You okay?"

"Yeah. I maybe shouldn't have said anything about there only being two of us." Andy takes off his glasses and rubs his face. "Fuck."

"I'll go talk to him," Joe says. "Maybe you should go to bed too."

"Yeah," Andy says. He doesn't sound convinced.

Pete is sitting by the coffin when Joe opens the door, arms around his knees, staring at the little transistor radio on the floor. All that's coming out of it is static. "Hey," Joe says.

"How's Hurley doing?" Pete says.

"I think he wet his pants. Otherwise, fine."

"Pitcher's broken," Pete says, like a kid.

"We'll get a new one."

"So what are we going to do about me?"

"Don't know," Joe says. "Get some rest."

"I'd go out if I could," Pete says. "I mean, he can't say that -"

"Yeah."

Pete gets into the coffin, defeated, and shuts his eyes. Joe moves to close the lid. Pete opens his eyes and says, "Nice job tonight, Trohman."

"Yeah," Joe says, and shuts him in.

Sometimes he sees flashes of Pete, the way he used to be. He holds onto those flashes, when things get bad.

When he goes back out, Andy is passed out on the sofa, fingers curled around the hilt of his sword, prepared for defense even in sleep. Joe doesn't move to try to cover him - Andy has reflexes like a cat and tends to wake up swinging - so he stands in the room and tries not to look over into the corner, at the place where Patrick ought to be.

*****

Sometimes he thinks about the night they lost Patrick, going over all the steps in his head so he can see where they went wrong, where they should have acted differently. It never really makes him feel any better.

It was probably sometime after they took Pete, after what seemed like a thousand cops threw his battered, kicking, cursing body into the back of a squad car; Joe only saw part of it as he was busy trying to dodge the cop who was rapidly advancing on _him_. He kept shouting, "We're trying to _fix_ this," but the cop didn't seem that interested. He finally lunged at Joe and took him down, taking the net gun away from him (and he should have thought something was wrong then, why didn't the asshole just shoot him?) and then pushing him against a squad car and starting to fumble for handcuffs.

"Huge mistake," Joe said. "This is the hugest mistake you've ever made."

"Shut your mouth."

Close by, he heard Andy saying, without even raising his voice, "Where're they taking my friend?" and some other cop telling him to shut the fuck up and calm down.

Patrick was on his other side, he remembers that much. Joe caught a glimpse of him, tiny and pale under the street light. He was hurt - there was blood splattered on his face and soaked through his jacket - and barely able to stand, weaving drunkenly while the cop handcuffed him. Joe said, "Patrick," and what he'd remember most clearly afterwards was Patrick looking dazedly up and almost rolling his eyes to heaven and then _smiling_ at him, the weary, reassuring smile that said, _God, I'm a fucking idiot and I'm pretty embarrassed about it, we’ll laugh about it later_. There was blood on his hands.

Then Joe heard the clink of metal as the cop behind him got out the cuffs, and he twisted and said, "Aren't you supposed to be chasing them? You know, the things that just killed all those people?"

And the cop laughed.

It was the laugh that made him think _shit_ , even before he felt the cop's hands on his wrists, hands that were cold and stiff and somehow wrong. It was the laugh that sounded more like a bark. He said, "Hurley, watch out," and shoved backwards, digging his elbows into the thing's sides and hearing the surprised, "Uh," and then hooking his foot around the thing's ankle and kicking.

"Dammit," Andy said, from somewhere to his side, and Joe saw him duck gracefully out from under the thing's arm, going for the knife he kept strapped to his ankle, the little one. Joe heard a strangled groan somewhere behind him, something that must have been Patrick, but he couldn't turn to check because the thing under him had just wrapped its hands around his neck, spitting and hissing, and he only just managed to crack his knuckles against its larynx before he blacked out. It gasped and dropped its hands.

Andy was running towards him, one of the things close behind. It reached out a hand and grabbed Andy by the hair, snapping his head back; Andy spun around, and the knife in his hand glittered as he swung it in a swooping arc, and the thing clutched its neck and staggered back. Andy shoved it with his free hand, shaking his hair out of the way, and the thing dropped to the ground.

"Where's the net gun?" Andy said when he reached Joe's side.

"On the other side." The thing under him groaned, a mutilated boneless sound. "Can you -"

"I'll take care of it."

Joe got up and went for the net gun, lying abandoned by the squad car (and that was another thing he'd missed, what cop would just leave a weapon?) He crept back to Andy, who was pulling the knife out of the thing's chest.

"Cops," Joe said. "I never thought it'd be cops. They took Pete."

"I saw. Let's go get him," Andy said. "Where's Patrick?"

It was only then that he realized that Patrick wasn't there. It was only then that he remembered the sound. "Oh, God."

"Joe -"

"He was hurt," Joe said. "I saw him - Pete said that -"

Andy took a deep breath. "You know which way he went?"

"He didn't go _anywhere_ ," Joe said. He was starting to feel sick and if he thought about it anymore he wasn't going to be able to do anything. "There was a cop - I think it was a cop -"

"Come on," Andy was pushing himself to his feet. "We'll get Pete in a minute. Help me find him. Are there any of them left?"

"I don't know, dude, I just saw them -"

"It took my sword," Andy said. "Tossed it - I'll cover you, look around."

He headed over to the place where Patrick had been, under the street light, by the squad car. Patrick's net gun was lying on its side by the front tires. There were blood drops on the pavement. Joe scanned the streets, sure that there was something coming that they had to take care of - the rest of the things, more cops, anything - but everything seemed flat and empty, and silent.

Andy had retrieved the sword; he came to where Joe was crouched. "What's going on?"

"There's blood here," Joe said. "I think -"

"There's blood there too," Andy said, pointing. "You think - fuck."

There was a trail of blood drops leading away from the car, red splatters already drying on the asphalt. Andy said, "Come on."

"Take his gun," Joe said.

He saw Andy hesitate - Andy really hated the guns - but he took it nonetheless. They followed the drops and Joe wasn't quite sure if he was hoping to find something or nothing.

When they got to the alley, all Joe could see was two dark shapes on the ground. What he was thinking was that he didn’t want to know, oh, God, he didn’t want to know.

"Turn the light on," Andy said, motioning at the net gun. Patrick had installed these kind of high beam things, in case they ever needed it. It was better than night vision.

He didn’t want to know.

"Turn it on."

Joe turned on the light.

What he saw first was Patrick, on the ground, his shoulder raised up at an unnatural angle, his hat lying on the ground. And then he saw the thing sprawled out against the wall, red-faced and too bloated to move, chin dripping with blood and slobber. It stared at them and smiled.

"So sweet," it crooned, swiping a thumb across its blood splattered chin, "So sweet."

Joe fired at it. It fell back without a sound, still smiling vacantly, blood that may or may not have been its own spreading across the front of its uniform. Joe dropped the gun. "I don't know. I think I got it."

"I'll just make sure," Andy said. "Can you –"

He was already heading to Patrick's side, saying, "Patrick. Patrick, dude, you okay?"

He dropped to his knees, touching Patrick's shoulder, his hands and his hair, sticky blood transferring to his fingers and Patrick still and growing colder. Joe tightened his hand around Patrick's shoulder and then Patrick fell backwards against him, almost in his lap, his head lolling back sickeningly.

His throat had been torn out.

"Andy," Joe said. "Andy." He gripped Patrick tighter, trying to hold him together, still thinking, crazily, _He'll be okay, he'll be okay, this isn't happening._

Andy kicked the thing over, apparently sure it was gone. He turned his head. Joe saw his face go greenish-gray, freckles standing out like black spots on the sun, and he said, "Oh, God."

"I don't know what to do," Joe said. "I don't. I don't know."

Andy swallowed. His face was stiff and his eyes were too bright, but then he bit down hard on his lower lip and said, "We can't leave him here." He picked up Joe's discarded net gun. "We'll get him back to the car. Can you see?"

"What?"

"You think they're coming back? Joe. Joe, we need to do this."

"I didn't see," Joe said.

"You think you can carry him? I'll keep lookout."

"Yeah," Joe said. "Yeah." He put Patrick's hat back on him.

He picked Patrick up – lighter than he should have been, it was like cradling an empty cocoon – and Andy walked out of the alley first, sword sheathed on his hip and guns raised. Joe followed, Patrick's blood soaking through his jacket and tears streaming down his face.

Andy stayed close to his side and muttered through his teeth, "Tell me if you see anything," and they managed to make it back to the car and get Patrick into the back seat.

"I'll drive," Andy said. "We need a plan."

"Pete," Joe said. "We need to get him."

"We'll track him down. He's okay."

He wasn't sure if Andy believed what he was saying or if he was just being kind. Joe wanted more than anything to believe him. It was something he counted on, that Pete was there, freaky and half-crazy and a pain in the ass, but _there_.

For a second, Joe thought he was going to start bawling again. Andy must have seen his face, because he said, "You get shotgun. Come on, the sun's going to be up soon."

"Yeah," he said.

"Keep your eye on him, too," Andy said, opening the car door. "We don't want –"

"If he sprouts any new teeth I'll let you know," Joe said. It came out harsh and felt almost like a betrayal, but it let him get in the car and look at Patrick lying across the backseat without thinking about it being Patrick. He couldn't let himself think about that. Not now.

Andy started the car. "You see where they took him?"

"They were heading west, I think."

"Sounds like the best place to start."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something tall and skinny leaning against one of the abandoned cars. He leaned over and grabbed Andy's arm, saying, "Hurley –"

He knew what it was, even before he could even really process what he was seeing – this was the thing he'd seen commanding those other things, all in expensive-looking suits and white gloves, the thing that seemed to direct the action with a languid wave, the thing that Pete talked about like he couldn't help himself, the thing that had hurt Pete. It was leaning against the car and watching them, somehow managing to look smug and immensely bored at the same time.

" _Fuck_ ," Andy spit, and slammed on the brakes. He fumbled for the keys and turned the ignition off. "It's right there? Where's the gun? We've gotta –"

The thing looked at them, smiled, looked towards the back seat of the car, turned back and slowly drew a finger across its throat. Still smiling. And then it was gone, like it had never been there at all.

"Where _is_ it?" Andy said. "We have to get it, that's –"

"Hurley, it's gone, man."

"It's _not_ ," Andy said, suddenly shrill, frantically trying to locate something that Joe couldn't see by his feet, almost slamming himself into the car door, forgetting that he had his seatbelt on. "It was – it watched – Motherfucker!"

"Andy –"

Andy burst into tears. He slumped over the steering wheel, banging his fists against the dashboard. "It fuckin' _watched_ us. It stood there and it watched us take him away. Sick _fuck_."

"We'll get it," Joe said, and it might have been a lame thing to say, but he didn't have anything else to offer. "It's okay. It's okay. We'll get it."

"It isn't fair," Andy said. "It's not fair – Patrick, what the fuck, Patrick, why did you fucking _come_?"

Joe said nothing. He rubbed Andy's back and waited for him to calm down.

"Someone's going to have to tell Pete this," Andy said finally, and Joe felt his stomach twist.

"Maybe we should find him first."

"Yeah." Andy straightened up and turned the car back on. "I fuckin' hate crying, dude."

"I hate you crying too. So we're even."

"Dick," Andy said, without malice, and started driving.

They found a crashed squad car two miles down the road. They got out to check it; one of the back doors had been ripped off the handles. It was lying by the side of the road. The bulletproof glass divider looked like it had exploded.

There were what looked like two cops in the front seat, their necks snapped almost in half, bruised and cut and bloody. There was a torn dark vest lying across the driver's lap, the fabric clutched in his fist.

"That's Pete's," Andy said, pointing at the vest. "He got away."

But it really had never been a question, Joe thought, when he heard the relief in Andy's voice and wondered why it was there. It was Pete. Of course he'd get away.

"We better head back," Andy said. "We need to tell him."

Patrick still looked the same by the time they got back to the warehouse, which was probably a sign that he wasn't coming back. In a way, Joe was glad of that – he'd heard enough about what happened during the change to make him think that it was only due to sheer will that Pete had even partly managed to hang onto himself – he didn't want to see Patrick become one of those things, too, even if it meant having him around.

"You think he's back?" Joe said as they pulled into the garage. He took his jacket off (still covered with Patrick's blood, the stains would never really go away, settling stiff and tacky against his skin), folding it over.

"I don't know. We'll find out," Andy said. "Help me with Patrick."

It was kind of a shitty resting place, but they put Patrick in the workshop by the garage, where he'd used to go if he had to mess around with electrical things and didn't want the rest of them getting in his way. It was cool in there, and quiet, and at least it would work until they could actually figure out where to bury him.

There was no time, that was the thing. Neither of them knew what to say anyway, and Pete wasn't really himself so much anymore.

Andy kept his hand on the sword by his hip. Joe carried the net gun.

The sun was up by now, but Joe heard Pete rattling around inside the room anyway. Pete's sleep schedule had always been fucked up.

Andy hadn't even gotten the door open halfway when Pete started talking a mile a minute, saying, "It's worse than I thought. The _cops_ , the fuckin' cops are in on this now. I saw it talking with them. Laughing. It's like this _fungus_ , it gets in everywhere."

There was part of a pair of handcuffs around Pete's left wrist, jangling like a charm bracelet. The links looked like they'd been pulled apart.

"The good news is," Pete said, "the good news is –"

"Pete," Andy said.

"I think they're just lackeys. Minions. We can take them out. Goddamn, when I got my head together it only took like ten minutes to take care of them. Where's Patrick? Patrick, get your ass –"

" _Pete,_ " Andy said. "There's a problem."

Pete stopped planning. "What?" he said irritably.

"Patrick –" Andy said. "Something really bad happened."

Pete looked at both of them, from Andy to Joe, back again. He fingered the metal link on the handcuffs. "Where's Patrick?"

"Something – we didn't know," Andy said. "One of them took him."

"Fuck. _Fuck_ , the idiot. I told him to be careful. Where'd they take him? He's valuable, they can't hurt him. It's me they want. Where is he?"

"Pete, he's not –" Andy took a deep breath. "It _took_ him. He's – he's not here anymore."

"Then why aren't you _looking_ for him?" Pete said, shrilly. "If it's because of me, I've only said this about twenty fuckin' times, I can take care of myself. Go get him back. What time is it, I'll go. Is the sun up yet?"

"It killed him," Andy whispered. "Pete, I'm so sorry, he's gone."

Pete was already backing up, holding onto his wrist, like he was the one afraid of them. And still, the stubborn little fuck, not getting it, saying, "They won't _hurt_ him. He's valuable, they just want to get rid of me. Where'd he -"

"We put him downstairs," Joe said. "In the workshop."

Andy said, "There just – there wasn't anything _left_ of him, Pete."

Pete stared. He ran his thumb over his lower lip. "He's downstairs?"

"We put him – we put the body there." Andy was shaking.

Pete looked at the floor, his hands, the handcuff. His shoulders began to pull in on themselves, face crumpling. "I don't –"

"I'm _sorry_ ," Joe said.

Pete turned away, hands raising to his temples, pushing the skin back. "You fuckin' – I want you both to get out now."

"Pete - " Andy said.

"Leave. Leave now. _Please._ "

Joe was already backing out the door. Andy followed after a second.

Even before the door shut, Pete was screaming.

Joe sat with his head in his hands at the top of the stairs, wanting to just leave, get the fuck out, and wanting to stay at the same time. Andy sat with his back against the wall, legs forced into knots in the narrow space between the wall and the banister, silent. It was probably the silence that was the worst, Joe thought, those times when Pete, abandoned and wordless, stopped howling his vocal chords raw, when the walls stopped shaking from the impact on the other side, when there was nothing but Andy breathing harshly and a pulse in Joe's head throbbing like Morse code, _Beyond any blessing and song, praise and consolation that are uttered in the world._

When the screaming stopped for good and Pete came back out with swollen eyes and his face clawed and torn, Andy started to say something, but Pete cut him off with, "Bury him. That's what you have to do, find a place to bury him. And don't tell me about it."

They buried Patrick out in Grant Park, just by the fountain. Later, when they circled back to the scene and found Dirty's body, a pale husk, eyes covered in copper, they would bury him alongside Patrick. Joe said that it was only right, they should be hanging out together in the afterlife like they used to hang out when they were alive.

In the old days, Andy probably would have told him exactly why and how he was being a retard, that dead was dead, but they both knew by now that sometimes that really wasn't true.

*****

If this had happened back in the old days, Joe thinks, Pete would have probably taken to his bed for at least a week and then probably cut everyone else off, retreating into himself and whatever cold dark thoughts were in his head, the ones that he only let Patrick know about (the ones that only Patrick, maybe, understood), and let both Andy and him loose, spinning out of his orbit. Except too much had happened in between, and so they just kept training and going on patrol, sometimes finding something to get rid of and more often, these days, not. And if Pete keeps his grief curled deep inside, cultivating it like some exotic flower, and if Andy spends more and more time in the training room, and if Joe thinks that they're all making a fucking horrible mistake, they kind of keep those facts to themselves.

The fact is that the things don't stop just because Patrick's gone, and they all have to work a little bit harder to try to keep the city safe. Joe tries to take over the gadgets, but he doesn't really have the patience to spend tinkering with gauges and fuses and whatever else, and Pete bans him from doing anything mechanical ever again after he puts some weird ovoid shaped thing too close to the Bunsen and sets the table on fire. It's out in like a minute, no harm done, but there's no changing Pete's mind and Andy, the traitor, backs him up.

They make do with the equipment they have. They lock up the instruments in an empty room because they don't know if they'll ever use them again. They pretend that everything is fine, and keep pretending.

Andy finally decides to stop procrastinating and puts Patrick's guitars out on the curb at the end of the street. Joe says, "They're still good, dude, it's a waste," but Andy says, "It's a waste anyway," and Joe doesn't say anything because he's right. He watches Andy line Patrick's guitars out like a row of soldiers on the street with his hands shoved in his pockets and doesn't offer to help.

Afterwards, they drive to the health food store on East 53rd. Joe doesn't really like shopping days; they always take longer than they should, and they always have to pretend they're not nervous. They don't have to take as many precautions in the daylight; Andy keeps a dagger strapped to his hip and Joe just tries to keep his ears and eyes open. But that's more of a habit, really, especially today; it's ten thirty in the morning on a beautiful hot summer day, and anything dead venturing out would probably crisp in two seconds.

The door to the store is locked, but Andy jimmies it open with the blade without any problem, saying, "They skimped on quality here." He's a lot better with the breaking and entering stuff than Joe is. Andy steals gasoline and spare parts for the car from the gas station outside of town, coming back tight-lipped and dusty and never saying anything about how things went. Andy creeps into churches and steals holy water for the blend, and Joe would bet a hundred bucks that it all has something to do with ex-Catholic guilt, but he's not exactly the right kind of person to talk with Andy about that, and Andy would just deny it anyway.

The store smells of rotten fruit and loose tea leaves and Joe's sinuses start to prickle and burn within two minutes, but he doesn't say anything. It's dark inside for the lowlights running along the floor. They secure the perimeter when their eyes adjust, just to make sure everything's okay. A couple of weeks ago, they'd broken into a Food 4 Less on South Damen to grab some cereal and garlic and found a dried out husk that might have been a manager, or a cashier, tossed against the shelves, skin pulled tight and dry as leather, and it took a hour to make sure nothing was lying in wait for them.

They try to take stuff that'll last for a while – mandarin oranges in syrup, trail mix, honey. Joe isn't quite sure what they'll do when the garlic runs out; there hasn't been a lot of deliveries of anything, or actually, any deliveries for quite a while, state of emergency, the radio said. They tried preserved garlic for a while but stopped when Pete's eyes started taking on this starved look and his hands started shaking. Pete says that they can grow their own if it comes down to it.

"Put that sodium light of yours to good use," he'd told Joe, grinning, happy at still being able to tease. "Weed and garlic, we'll be a fucking cottage industry."

Joe has his doubts – the only thing Pete's good at growing is mold, but he's willing to try if he has to.

"Look alive," Andy says cheerfully by his side, and grabs a container off the shelf. "I wish they had VitaSoy. Silk goes bad so fast. What else do we need?"

"We need batteries, dude," Joe says. "Or is that too non-organic?"

"I'll see if I can get us into Walgreen's when this is done," Andy says. "Maybe that's not a good idea. I tried to get bandages last week and the door was barricaded. Let's try the one on West Kinzie. That one has a back window."

When they get back to the warehouse, the guitars are gone from the end of the street. Andy gives the curb a puzzled frown and then glances up at the warehouse's windows, but doesn't say anything.

Inside, Patrick's guitars are all lined up against the wall, all except one that's on the couch, lying on its side like it's gone to sleep. They both look at it. Joe thinks that the room feels like someone just left it, arranging things almost but not quite to his liking, planning to come back later.

"What the fuck," Joe says.

"Pete probably moved them back," Andy says.

"Was there an eclipse that we didn't know about?" Joe says. He could also mention the fact that Pete didn't want to hear about anything that had to do with Patrick, much less actually touch his stuff. Most of the time, Pete can't even say Patrick's name.

Andy scowls at him. "Well, that's the only reasonable explanation."

"Since when has anything been reasonable?" Joe says.

Andy shakes his head, pushing anything else that Joe could bring up away. "I'm going to the training room for a while. They're fine here, I'll do something with them later."

"Hurley," Joe says. "It's not going to get any less weird if you ignore it."

"I'm not ignoring it," Andy says. He's already walking away. "I'm just doing other stuff."

"Hurley," Joe says again, but Andy's got that stubborn set to his mouth that says he's not listening.

This is how Andy seems to deal with things these days: if he doesn't acknowledge it, it doesn't exist. Joe kind of wants to say that Andy can't expect to control everything in his life, except Andy's brought control to the level of art form and Joe doesn't know how to break through that.

Joe looks at Patrick's guitars for a long time. The only vaguely comforting thing about it is that he doesn't think that any of the things, if they did find out where they're hiding out, would bother picking up a bunch of guitars and then having a jam session. He starts towards the one on the couch, thinking he should put it away before Pete sees it, but his hand freezes before he even touches the neck and so he just leaves it alone.

When it starts getting near time to go on patrol, he goes down to the training room to get Andy. He figures he won't say anything about randomly appearing guitars for a while; he's not really in the mood to bash his head against the brick wall of Andrew Hurley's stubbornness. It's just another thing that they won't talk about.

Andy's doing target practice when Joe comes in, darting back and forth between the obstacles that they set up, a clutch of stakes in one hand. The target board shudders every time Andy hits it, which is pretty often. When he misses, Andy just snarls, "Motherfucker," to himself and keeps going.

"Hurley, dude," Joe says loudly. "Finish up. It's getting dark."

Andy doesn't stop. His shoulders are knotted, face streaked with sweat. Joe wonders how he can even see. "Fuck, fuck, fuck," he says, not to Joe, and throws another stake. A corner of the target board splinters off and goes flying. " _Fuck._ "

"Andy," Joe says. "Andy!"

Andy drops the stakes. He takes a shaky breath and runs his hand over his face. His knuckles are split open, raw and bleeding.

"C'mon," Joe says. He goes to Andy's side, stepping over discarded stakes.

"Sorry," Andy says quietly.

"Yeah," Joe says, and he puts an arm around Andy's shoulders and leads him away so that they can tape up his knuckles before they head out for the night.

*****

Pete's getting on his nerves. Joe's sitting on the floor trying to the best of his limited ability to fix the net gun (it keeps jamming on him, God only knows why), and Pete keeps alternating between scowling out the window at the gray cloudy day outside and wandering over to bother him, picking up bits of the dismantled apparatus with a smirk and a, "How long you think it'll take before you completely break this thing?"

"Depends," Joe says, but Pete's already turned away.

Andy's made the smart choice and escaped down to the training room, where he'll probably stay until they have to leave. Joe thinks about going down to join him; if Pete wants to come along, that's fine, it's good to use physical activity as a buffer, except Joe's arms and shoulders and back are throbbing from too much exertion and too little sleep, and the thought of training now just feels like punishment. He stares at the net gun's trigger mechanism, willing it to make sense. It doesn't.

The daylight's faint enough that Pete can stare out the window without having to lower the blinds, but he keeps losing interest. Joe doesn't know what he's looking for.

He picks up the gun again and resumes staring at the trigger mechanism. He wishes he were better at this stuff.

"It's like Spiderman," he says. "All this sticky shit."

"It's hemp, dude," Pete says without turning around. "Why would it be sticky?"

"I don't know," Joe says. He thinks he sees the problem; tiny threads wrapped around the gears. He jabs his pinky finger at them.

"Don't fuck around with it," Pete says, coming back over. He picks up what used to be attached to the gun's muzzle and turns it over. "What's this do?"

"It does something, I don't know what." He jabs too quickly and hears something that's probably important snap. "Oh, goddamnit."

"I told you," Pete says smugly.

If he stays here any longer he's going to try to hit Pete with something. "I'm goin' out."

"What are you going out for? We've got stuff to do."

"I'm _going out_ ," Joe almost shouts, and then clamps his mouth closed. Pete looks as if he's going to say something, probably something along the lines of _Trohman, what the hell?_ because it's rare that he actually yells at Pete, and he feels like an asshole for it. Except Pete just nods, silently, like he understands, and Joe has to get out of there.

He makes it out the door and halfway down the block before he realizes that he doesn't know where he's going, he's not even that mad anymore, and the net gun is still broken. Still, he feels obligated to finish what he started, so he goes to the corner, kicks a wall half-heartedly, and turns around.

It's times like this he misses smoking up. He misses the days when he could shut himself off and fall into soft green haze for a few hours and only think about watching stupid stuff on TV and maybe getting it together enough to order a pizza. But there's too much stuff to worry about now, not enough hours in the day, and they've all had to give things up (Pete most of all), and he can't do it anymore.

Early on, he'd thought he could manage it. He'd tried sneaking off and smoking in the garage, sitting in the corner choking on fumes, but it always ended badly. There was no more soft lazy calm, there was paranoia and claustrophobia and maybe a little bit of nausea, and even if Patrick hadn't caught him he'd have probably stopped on his own. Probably.

It was a blessing that Patrick had been the one who found him out, he thinks. Andy would have waited for the secondhand smoke to clear and then wrung Joe's neck, followed by a six hour lecture and then Andy never really trusting him again, and Pete – he doesn't even want to think about what Pete would have done to him. So thank God it was Patrick, who'd just looked at him until he started to squirm and then said, "You know, you're really kind of a dumbass."

"I _know_ ," Joe said.

"I mean, it isn't – things aren't exactly normal now, you know? We can't really act like they are."

"I'm just, you know." He shrugged lamely. "Pretending."

"Dude, Trohman –" Patrick ran a finger over his eyebrow. "I mean, your coordination's got to be kind of fucked up right now. How're you going to aim? Something could come right at you, how quickly do you think you can react when you're high?"

"I wouldn't be –" Joe started, and then shut up. "It's been kind of sucking, anyway. I keep seeing shit."

" _I_ see shit," Patrick pointed out matter-of-factly. "Pot's got nothing to do with that."

"Aw, fuck you."

"And, dude, have a mint or something. Unless you want Pete to get suspicious."

"Don't tell anyone about this," Joe said. "Pete –"

"I don't need to tell him _everything_ ," Patrick said, sounding a little hurt.

"I wasn't saying that," Joe said, even though he might have kind of been. "By the way, you've got the Jewish guilt thing down cold. You sure you're Irish?"

"I guess. Family history's kind of cloudy." Patrick got up off the floor. He looked down at Joe. "You know, I think this is the only time I'll ever be taller than you. Want to sit on the floor more often? Make me feel better about myself?"

And then he'd laughed, and Patrick had shrugged and said, "Fine, suit yourself," and then wandered off to fix something and they'd never talked about it again. He hasn't smoked a bowl since.

He really fucking misses Patrick.

Sudden scalding grief washes over him, makes him lean against the side of the building and gulp for breath and close his eyes. He's almost back to the warehouse and trying to get it together, and he doesn't hear the footsteps behind him until it's too late.

Someone tackles him from behind, shoving him down hard on the pavement, skinned hands and knees like a kid, and Joe lets out an outraged yell. Someone's on top of him, someone heavy, and Joe kicks back with his heel and feels it connect with a knee but whoever or whatever it is doesn't even flinch.

 _Stupid, Joseph_ , Joe thinks, _Stupid, you should know better by now, nothing's safe,_ and then he's flipped over onto his back and there's a heavy forearm across his throat and a voice hissing, "Where is he hiding?"

"I don't fucking know what you're talking about," Joe says, and then whoever or whatever it is brings a fist down hard against his cheekbone and it hurts, bones jarring. He brings his hands up and digs his nails into soft skin, but there's still no reaction, it's like trying to take down a doll.

"Tell us where he is," the voice says, "And we'll let you live."

"Fuck you," Joe says. Whoever or whatever it is – shock of platinum hair, flat slate eyes – doesn't blink. It really does look like a doll, almost lifelike but not really – he knows it's not one of the things because there's blood on his hands and it's the middle of the day besides, but it's not really human either, it's like something's pulling its string and making it talk.

"Tell us where he is –"

"Shut up," Joe says, even though it's getting hard to breathe. "You're boring."

He feels a fist connect with his face again, lip splitting open, and he thinks, _This is a stupid way to die._

"Still not telling," Joe says, and shuts his eyes.

" _Get your fucking hands off him_ ," and it sounds like Pete but that's not right, Pete can't be outside now, but when he opens his eyes it really _is_ Pete, hoodie pulled up over his head and moving fast. It's still not enough – he can see the skin of Pete's face burning, skin flaking and bubbling. "Get away," Joe tries to yell, but Pete's on top of the doll-thing now, snapping its neck with a harsh crack, and the moment the thing hits the pavement, sprawled out discarded and bonelessly dead, he's dragging Joe up and pulling him back inside the warehouse and up the stars. Joe tries to stand but his legs won't hold him up, and the minute Pete lets go he hits the floor. He still hasn't got his breath back and for a moment he thinks he's about to pass out.

He hears the door lock above him and Pete slumps to the floor beside him, burned and ghastly-looking, eyes staring out of his head. "Saw from the window," he says, gasping. "Heard you yelling –"

"You fucking asshole," Joe says. "You fucker. Stupid fucking goddamn shitty – you could have died, you fucker. You stupid –"

"Yeah," Pete says. "Yeah, I know, Trohman. I know."

"Fuck you."

"It's already healing. Look." Pete points to his face. Already the skin's coming back together, shiny and still half-raw. Joe gags.

"Sorry. Sorry. You look kind of fucked up yourself."

"I didn't see," Joe says. "I should have been more careful, I –"

"Yeah, I pissed you off. C'mon, you look like shit."

"I don't care."

"I do. Need you pretty. Come on, I'll fix you up."

"No."

"Dude, quit pouting."

"Just because _you_ have a death wish," Joe says. His face still hurts but at least he can feel his legs. "What was that, anyway? It wasn't one of them."

"No," Pete says shortly. "It fuckin' wasn't. Come on, get a cold pack and get up before Hurley comes up and sees you."

 _Sees both of us_ , Joe wants to say, but he doesn't. He stands up and goes to get a cold pack, still kind of dizzy.

The radio in Pete's room is playing Cinnamon Girl. Joe sits on the floor and lets Pete stick Band-Aids on him, even though he's not really cut up. Pete pauses a minute before he wipes the blood off Joe's mouth. Joe looks at him. Pete stares back, eyes dark and unknowable, and then says, "Give me a break. You're not that irresistible," and swabs at his swollen lip roughly.

"I've been waiting for this," Pete says. "I guess they know we're in this area now."

"I thought – how?"

"That was a scout, Trohman. Looking for me. Like the cops. Like that fuckin' priest. Minions."

"It was – it was like it wasn't really there, Pete."

"Don't ever look at their eyes," Pete says. The radio starts playing Always Crashing in the Same Car. "I mean it. They'll suck you in. Hypnotize you. You'll do anything they want."

He doesn't ask if that's what happened to Pete. "You really think they know where we are?"

"I don't know. I'm going to say yes, you know? We've been here too long anyway."

"Yeah," Joe says. He feels something ache in his chest. They've been here long enough that the warehouse has started to feel like home, like somewhere safe, but now it isn't and they have to start again.

"Don't get fuckin' attached," Pete says. "It's just a place."

 _It was ours,_ he wants to say, but he doesn't. "I don't know where else to go."

"We'll find something. Chicago's a fuckin' ghost town by now anyway. Lots of places to hide."

The radio goes from Bowie to Ella Fitzgerald singing Begin the Beguine, and the switch is so abrupt that it makes him blink. "Dude, what station are you listening to, anyway?"

"Don't know," Pete says. "It doesn't even have batteries in it."

"What do you mean, it doesn't have batteries in it?" He thinks Pete's joking, but then he turns his head and sees the empty back of the transistor radio, all exposed springs, and the music keeps playing. "What the fuck?" He starts to get up.

" _Don't fuckin' touch it_ ," Pete says, and he immediately sits back down. The music changes to Earth Crisis, Slither, and Joe almost stops breathing.

"Pete," he says. Pete just looks at him guiltily, like a kid with a secret. "How long's this been happening?"

Pete shrugs. "I don't know. A while."

"Why didn't you say anything, then?"

"Because it was _mine_ ," Pete says. "It was mine and I wanted to keep it here with me. It just – it made it easier to think that he was still here, you know?"

"Oh, Jesus, Pete," he says. "I mean, we all miss him, but –"

"I'm not losing anyone else," Pete says. "I'm not. You and Andy need to stay here. I can't handle losing anyone."

Joe can't think of anything to say. He puts an arm around Pete's shoulders and wishes it could be enough, even if Pete has to pretend that he's someone else.

*****

Andy has a fit when he sees Joe's face. Joe tries to blame it on something else, but Andy's too smart for that. He calls Joe a stupid motherfucker who wouldn't know how to be careful if he tried, and can't even look at him. Joe stares at his feet and doesn't say anything, because it wasn't exactly like he _wasn't_ a stupid motherfucker. Pete mutters, "Hurley, lay off, he took care of it," but Andy's not listening. Pete skulks out of the room before Andy starts questioning him, too.

Andy doesn't talk to Joe for two days after that.

Then they get back from another wasted night of patrol and Andy wakes up screaming, thrashing on the couch like he's having a seizure, and then comes to lay on the mattress that Joe's sprawled across. Joe's still half-asleep, trying to get it together enough to grab a knife or the net gun or something to use as a weapon against the hordes that are undoubtedly breaking in, and his heart only stops pounding when he feels the ball of his foot touch Andy's back.

"Joe?" Andy says. "Joe?"

"What?" Joe croaks.

"Nothing. Just checking."

He starts to sit up, reaches a hand towards Andy, but Andy mumbles, "Please don't," so he just lies back on the mattress.

Andy says, "I dreamed you died."

"But I didn't," Joe says. There's really nothing else he can say – well, there are things he could say, but nothing that wouldn't remind Andy of all the fear and guilt that he tries so hard not to show. So he just says, " _You're_ going to die if you don't let me go back to sleep."

"Fine," Andy says. He stays at Joe's feet until they have to wake up for real.

*****

Joe thinks that Pete was right, that they can't keep doing what they've been doing. They have to get out of the warehouse, like, yesterday; even if the things don't know where they are now, it's just a matter of time before they do. And patrol's not working out. Something needs to change.

Pete has a plan. "Hotels," he says to Joe one morning when they both should be asleep, but Pete needs someone to talk at, so he dragged Joe into his room right after they got back. The radio – still without batteries – is in the middle of a solid block of Joy Division b-sides. It's on These Days right now.

"Hotels," Pete says again, hunched in the corner of his room, tapping his fingernails on the floorboards. "Don't know why I didn't think of it earlier. There must be about five thousand places downtown with gyms and garages and fucking everything. And it's anonymous, that's the good thing, it'll buy us some time. Our own personal hotel."

The radio skips, turns to static, hissing white noise. Joe says, "I just kind of want an actual bed."

Pete gives him a look. "Aim for the sky, Trohman." He sweeps his hand over the floor. "Somewhere downtown. I don't want to get out of the city. It'll save on gas. We'll work our way out."

He's not really following what Pete's trying to say – it's coming at him about a hundred miles an hour and Pete sounds more feverish than focused. They both really should be asleep right now.

"Where do we have to go?" Pete says. "Where do we go?"

"The Marriott on North Michigan?" Joe says. "I don't know, I mean, I guess there's a gym and whatever –"

The radio hisses, crackles, spits out something that sounds a little like a scream. Pete stops running his hands over the floor.

"The kid's a genius," he informs the room. "The kid's a _fucking genius._ "

*****

The Marriott's doors are locked when Joe and Andy go to check it out, but Andy jimmies the door open. The electricity's out. As soon as the door opens Joe knows they've got trouble – the smell comes at him like a gust of wind, a mixture of mice and trapped dust and rotting meat. "Hurley –" he whispers, his hands immediately going for the net gun that isn't there, that he left back in the car. He settles on grabbing the stake at his hip.

"Shit," Andy mutters and pulls his shirt over his nose and mouth. "Stay by me, okay?"

"I can't _see._ " He wonders how likely it is that they're about to get jumped – the things have a tendency to slash and burn and then take off, leaving the wreckage behind, but they also tend to hide in dark places, waiting, and either option seems good right now.

"Give me the flashlight," Andy whispers. "Just check to see if they're here."

"The batteries are dying," he whispers back, but hands the flashlight over. Andy turns over the flickering beam, runs it over the walls. Nothing appears to be moving in the corners of the lobby.

"They're fuckin' everywhere," Andy whispers. "Everywhere, I don't know what Pete was thinking –"

"But are they _here_?"

"I don't know. I'm looking. Can you see?"

"I can't –" Joe says, and then trips over what he thinks is a couch in the middle of the lobby. "Ow."

"Be _careful_ ," Andy snaps, groping across the room. The flashlight beam flickers unsteadily in his hand. "Go prop the door open or something. Get some light in."

"I'll get a chair." He's pretty sure that if there was anything waiting for them, it would have attacked by now, so he doesn't bother trying to keep it down anymore. He drags one of the lounge chairs towards the door, or what may be the door. It scratches on the floor.

The light streams in palely from outside. Joe takes a gulp of fresh air. Andy flicks the flashlight off. He's standing by the reception desk, hip braced against the wood, still groping along even though they can both see fine now.

"I thought that was it," Andy says. "If they're hiding here, it's not in the lobby."

"We'll have to go through the place," Joe says. "That's a big fucking waste of time."

"I'll find us a screwdriver somewhere," Andy says. "We'll have to take the doors off upstairs, I don't think the keycards are going to work - _Fuck!_ "

"What?" Joe says, already moving. "Andy, what –"

Andy says nothing. He jerks away from the reception desk, choking. When Joe gets close the smell of meat gets stronger, sweetish and blood-coppery and rotten. He doesn't want to look, but he does – there's a body behind the desk, on the floor. "Dammit," Joe says. It's clearly been some time; the face is stiff and sunken in, belly bloated. If he touched it now, it would burst apart, spewing itself over the floor.

"Dammit," Joe says again.

Andy sits on the couch in the middle of the lobby, head in his hands. "There's another one we missed."

 _Garbage detail_ , Joe thinks. He sees the rest of his life going on like this, burying bodies and going in circles, every day someone else they couldn't save, some other person gone missing and some other missed chances. "I can't do this," he says. "I can't do this."

"Fuck you," Andy says, not understanding. "Why does it have to be me who cleans up this shit? You two don't even think about it, you don't care –"

"Because I keep failing, Hurley," Joe says. "We could stop them, but we _don't_."

"I know we don't."

"It's all the time. It's just day after day of failure," Joe says. "Something's got to change. We go out every fucking night and it doesn't help. Pete was right."

"You always think Pete's right."

"When's the last time we caught something?"

Andy just stares at his hands. "I don't know."

"My point exactly," Joe says. "You want to come take a look at this again? We better get used to seeing it."

"I am used to it," Andy says stubbornly, but doesn't move.

"Look, I can't do this, okay? I can't go out tonight, it's all going to be shitty and it's not working. We need something else."

"Yeah, like what?" Andy sounds more worn out than anything.

"I just think we should go out earlier. Like, nine in the morning earlier. Stop giving them time to run. They've got to rest sometime, we can find them easier if we go out in the daytime."

"What the fuck?" Andy says. "Somebody almost kills you, and then you want to go out and give them the chance to do it again? You're worse than Pete."

"If I saw them coming, I could handle it. I can handle it if they're not dead."

"Yeah, because you handled it so well last time."

"I took care of it," Joe said. He decides not to mention that Pete had to intervene. "How much can we get done in eight hours, Hurley? Especially since they're on to us now. They _expect_ us."

"Twenty-four hours a day," Andy says. "You're just going to stop sleeping?"

"We can take shifts. You can go do whatever you want then," Joe says. "Take Tuesdays off, whatever. I mean, I think they've got to be clustered around, I can drive a couple blocks –"

"What?" Andy says. "You want to handle this alone? Fuck you. _Fuck you._ "

"Dude, I'll be like an Imperial stormtrooper. Extra-extra-extra firepower."

"No."

"You know I'm right," Joe says. "You want to keep cleaning up bodies?"

Andy looks at him. "No."

"Yeah, so –"

Andy says, "I don't want anything to happen to you, either."

"Well. You know," Joe says. "How about nothing happens to me? Nothing's going to happen to me. I'll just never die ever, that's my plan."

"Well, great goddamn plan."

"What are we supposed to do, Hurley?" he says. "What other choice is there?"

Andy closes his eyes. "Nothing." He gets up off the couch. "Help me clean this up."

The warehouse burns to the ground two weeks after they leave.

*****

The electronic keycards don't work in the hotel doors anymore, so Pete takes it upon himself to get rid of them, at first using a screwdriver on the hinges, but then he gets impatient and just kicks them in. The hallways are filled with splintered wood and metal.

Andy stops being doubtful about patrolling during the day when he stumbles across one of the things' hiding places – he calls Joe on the walkie-talkie that he's insisted that they both carry, whispering through the crackle, "There's about ten of them sleeping in there – I'm down on West Grand if you don't hear from me." A hour later, when Joe's about to say fuck it and see how fast he can get to West Grand on foot, Andy radios in and says, "I took care of it."

Andy comes back to the hotel at quarter past five, a little scratched up and exhausted, mouth set in grimly satisfied lines. "It was like mice," he says. "You take care of one and then two seconds later you see something else."

Pete says, "What, are you _complaining_ now?" and clapping Andy's shoulder, beaming so hard Joe thinks his face is going to split. Andy gives them both a shy smile, shrugging off Pete's praise, and stumbles off to bed. Pete says, "Don't rest on your laurels, Hurley," but lets him go. The rest of the night, Joe drives them both around, Pete talking a mile a minute about how he needs to pick up tips from Andy, and Joe feels so jealous that he's ashamed of himself.

He doesn't really know what's up with Pete anymore. The days when Joe doesn't have to go out on patrol, he tries to keep an eye on Pete, but the hotel's too big and it's easy to lose him. Pete usually comes to find him when he's got some new plan or some new strategy that he wants to try out, but that's been happening less and less. Most of the time, Pete just walks through the halls, staring at the floor like he thinks it's about to break open. Joe joins him sometimes, just in case he wants company, but Pete doesn't really seem to notice he's there, and Joe doesn't know what to say and he can't keep up with Pete's pace, this tiny dark blur moving through the building. The only time Pete seems to calm down is when he's in his room, lying on the floor, fingers knotted around his transistor radio, which mostly plays Get Up Kids and Kenye and anything else that was Pete's favorite, before.

Joe's gotten a lot better at the entering part of breaking and entering. On the days when he's out on patrol (Andy calls him on the walkie talkie every ten minutes, until Joe says, "You know, are you trying to alert anyone that I'm here?") he wanders into abandoned stores, apartment buildings, schools. He's wondered how he's going to explain himself if he ever walks in on some random normal family, but he just hopes that life has gotten crazy enough that a guy walking around with stakes and a net gun isn't that surprising anymore.

There's an apartment building on West Roosevelt that's missing the front door. He goes up the stairs as quietly as he can, but the wood creaks and groans under his feet and it's a relief when he gets to the landing. He tries all the doors on the first floor, and then the second floor, but they're all locked up tight and he doesn't trust his skill on quietly getting locks off. There's a thin layer of dust all over everything, along with something that looks like soot, and it's hard to breathe.

On the third floor, there's one door that's ajar. He swings in like an action hero, net gun raised, but the room is empty. The wooden floor boards are warped and dirty, and they feel oddly mushy when he takes a step. There's a weird splatter on the wall in front of him.

When he gets close to the splatter, he can smell not-quite-dry blood, and his heart rate picks up – he knows something's close, he just doesn't know _where_. He bends down onto the floor and stares at the dirt; if he squints really hard he can see a trail of drops leading back out the door. He gets back up, and starts for the door.

He doesn't know if he was going too fast or walking too heavily or if the whole place was just falling apart, because halfway across the room he put his foot down and felt the floor give way from under him. There's a cracking sound of wood, a groan, and then he's falling through the ceiling below, waving his arms frantically, until he realizes that he's going to hit the floor and it's going to _hurt_ , so he does his best to curl into a ball to try to avoid breaking his spine.

He feels something pop out of his shoulder, his ankle bending in half between his weight and the floor below him, and he would have yelled but he doesn't have any breath. There are splinters in his hair and the floor stinks of bleach and dirt.

For a minute, his only thought is _it hurts it hurts god fucking dammit it hurts so bad_ , writhing on the floor and trying to get his breath back, and then his thought is, _Well, this is stupid_. He reaches for the walkie-talkie with his good hand to call for help, but it's cracked neatly in half from where he fell on it, and unusable.

He can move his toes, so his legs aren't broken, and his right leg feels okay. His left ankle is throbbing and he can feel it starting to swell inside his boot, but it's probably just sprained. He can't really move his left arm without it hurting, which is probably a sign that it's either broken or he's dislocated something. He manages to roll onto his stomach and then his right knee, gritting his teeth and pushing himself up, wondering how he's going to drag himself back to the hotel and how this is going to affect patrol in the future.

He's in what looks like a suite of empty rooms, unfurnished, a kitchen behind him and a room in front of him. The windows are boarded up.

Even in the dim light, he can see what looks like a coffin in the other room.

Joe holds his breath and listens for anything else moving. He thinks that if anything heard him, he'd be gone by now.

He could just try to get out, haul his bruised and battered ass back to the relative safety of the hotel and not try to take on anything when he's not at full capacity, but he doesn't want to tell Pete that he ran away when he could have done something, could have at least tried to be useful. He doesn't want to let Pete down.

It takes a long time to get into the other room. Even with baby steps, his whole body hurts, and he doesn't want to make any more noise and have something swoop in on him. He holds a stake in his good hand; the net gun is okay, he thinks, but it takes two hands to handle properly and he doesn't trust his strength right now.

The coffin is closed when Joe gets to it. Joe thinks, _I'm just going to check, that's all I'm doing,_ and switches the stake to his other hand, forcing his fingers closed and biting his lip against the pain. He opens the coffin with one hand.

It's a Dandy, that's for sure, asleep in a cool gray suit and gloves, dark messy hair and a bowler hat in its fingers. Not the leader, Joe thinks, not the one who hurt Pete, but a Dandy none the less. Joe switches the stake back to his good hand, thinking, _You fucker,_ trying to get as close as he can without actually crawling into the coffin itself. He holds onto the side of the coffin with his bad hand, ignoring the shooting pain, raising the stake and bringing it down.

It happens too fast for him to really process it; there's a hand around his wrist and holding fast, a flash of green as the thing opens its eyes, and then there's teeth sinking through the meat of his hand, pushing through skin and sinew, blood trickling warm down his palm. And then he hears the stake dropping to the floor with a thump, and his own voice, screaming.

The thing lowers his hand, blood across its mouth like a lipstick smear, reaching up and pulling him down into the coffin. "There you are," it says.

The last thing Joe thinks before he passes out, face pressing into the thing's cold throat, the last thing he hears is something like God, saying, _Time's up, Joseph._

*****

Joe doesn't remember much for a while. He thinks at some point he kind of wakes up, with his face buried in someone's shoulder and someone's arms around his waist, and wind hitting the back of his neck and the feeling that he's moving very fast, but he's in too much pain to stay awake for long.

When he wakes up again, he's on his back, lying on a mattress looking at the ceiling. His foot hurts and his arm hurts and his hand hurts, and he's not sure where he is. For a second, he wonders if he's still back in the apartment on West Roosevelt, or somewhere that he knows how to get out of.

"Hello," the thing says from next to him.

Joe flinches and tries to scrabble away, yanking himself to the corner of the mattress. He jars his bad ankle and moans before he can help it.

"I'd stay still if I were in your place," the thing says. There's a sound of a match striking, and Joe sees the thing bending over a table, lighting a candle. "You haven't anywhere else to go."

Joe thinks that the thing's words don't match its voice; the words sound like they could come out of Cary Grant or Vincent Price's mouth, all smooth and urbane, but the thing's voice is low and dark, with a rough slur around the edges. High-class words and low-class breeding.

"So I really wanted to kill you," Joe says. "I guess that didn't happen."

The thing shrugs and comes back to the mattress. It's still in its suit, splattered with blood now. Its eyes are brilliant green. "And I thought we killed you. That's something we've learned."

"We're like roaches, dude," Joe says. "Roaches with guns and shit."

"So where have the other roaches scurried away to?"

 _That's it,_ Joe thinks. _That's why I'm not dead_. "Hey, I'm just the asshole who got caught. I don't know where anyone is."

"You're a liar."

"I'm true to my nature," Joe says. "Lie all the time, that's what I do."

"Not all the time." The thing comes to sit next to him. And then it just stays there. Staring.

Joe scowls and stares back at it, thinking, _Fuck you, not intimidated._ The thing has really weird eyes, all green and gold and bottomless pupils, the light reflected in a starlike dot in the depths. It looks at him without blinking, and its eyes get bigger and bigger and blacker and the dot seems to be actually growing, spreading out like vines, or a supernova. Joe realizes too late that he's falling into it, remembers, too late, Pete telling him to not look in the thing's eyes. He tries to turn away, but he just manages to bang his heels on the mattress. He's never been so grateful for pain before, his throbbing ankle dragging him back to reality. He shuts his eyes tightly, banging his bad hand on the mattress, and it hurts and it hurts and thank God, he's still here.

The thing sighs. "No matter. He'll be along soon enough. I suppose you need water?"

"Fuck you," Joe says through gritted teeth. He keeps his eyes shut.

"It makes no difference to me."

They don't say anything else for a while. Joe lies on the mattress and feels the thing that he's started calling Green Eyes staring at him. He wonders what time it is. Andy and Pete have probably figured out that something's happened by now; the last time he radioed in was just before he parked the car. If they ever find him (and he hopes they do and he hopes they don't, he doesn't know if it's just him and Green Eyes up here, or if there's a whole squadron somewhere beyond the walls). He wonders where he is.

He hears footsteps outside, and then someone soft-voiced calling, "Mike?"

"Here," Green Eyes says, and stops staring at Joe and gets up. Joe opens his eyes and looks at Green Eyes' back, its shoulders tense and anticipatory, and then he sees someone tall and skinny in the doorway and his heart sinks.

He's never getting out of here.

Green Eyes steps aside and gestures to Joe. "What do you want with him?"

The thing in the doorway looks the same from when Joe saw it on the night Patrick died. Its suit is the same cool gray three-piece, hat hanging casually in its hands. It barely even looks at Joe. "This is all?"

"Yes. Yours wasn't there. He's not talking."

"Didn't you try to _make_ him talk?"

Green Eyes scowls. "It didn't work."

"It would have worked if he wasn't injured," the thing says reflectively. "Your bad luck."

"What –" Green Eyes starts, but the thing just waves a hand and cuts it off. They start walking over to the mattress. Joe shuts his eyes and turns his head away, but then here's a hand in his hair, yanking him around.

"You can stop that now," the thing says.

Joe reluctantly opens his eyes. The thing's hand is twisted in his hair. Its eyes are very dark.

"So where have you been hiding yourself?" the thing says. "Where is _he_?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Joe says. "Hey, can I get an aspirin or something?"

The thing doesn't even blink. It leans close to Joe's face. He can see the fangs pressing into its red, red lips. "How is he?" it says. "Is he missing his little golden-haired darling?"

The thing's breath is foul. Joe wants to put his hands around its neck, crush its larynx. He can't breathe or even see from rage, filling up his throat, tight and strangling. He tries to spit but his mouth's too dry and all that comes out is a choking cat noise.

"Mind yourself," Green Eyes snaps at him. It presses a warning hand against his chest. "You see how it is."

The thing pulls back but keeps its hand in Joe's hair. "Shall we keep him here?"

"Leave him to die," Green Eyes says. "He's no good to us, Bill."

"Don't be so impatient."

"Make him an example." Green Eyes takes its hand off Joe's chest and begins to play with his shirt cuff. "I'll leave him where they'll find him."

"I don't _want_ that," the thing snarls suddenly. "I want him, Mike. I want him and this one knows where he is."

"No, I fuckin' don't," Joe says shrilly, but they ignore him. He tries to squirm away but they're holding too tight.

"He won't talk."

"He'll talk." The thing cards its cold fingers slowly through Joe's hair, playing with the curls. "Given enough time, they all do."

"And who's meant to watch him?"

"You're the one who brought him here, Mike."

Green Eyes' mouth tightens. It digs its fingers into Joe's wrist. It hurts like hell. "I will _not_. I will not pass the time by nursemaiding some fucking –"

"Do whatever you like with him," the thing says, and Joe wants to scream. "Just make sure he talks."

Green Eyes lets him go. "And if we find them before he talks?"

"What's it matter?" The thing gets up. "I'll send word if we find the others."

"And shall we be doing anything else while I play nanny? Or are you just going to sit and wait until your pet comes for you?"

The thing looks at Green Eyes. "That is up to me, Mike."

"Milord," Green Eyes drawls with icy irony, "had best to decide whether he wants to be a leader, or if he just wants to save his pride."

The thing backhands Green Eyes, carefully, almost languidly, but the blow sends Green Eyes sprawling. "Stay here until I call for you," it says.

Green Eyes picks itself off the floor and folds its arms sulkily. "When will that be?"

"When I decide to see you," the thing says. "Make sure he talks." It slams the door after it when it leaves.

Green Eyes kneels down and looks at Joe. Joe doesn't want to look back, but he does, meeting Green Eyes' weary stare.

Joe's never felt more alone in his life.

*****

For a while, nothing happens. Green Eyes sits at the foot of the mattress, watching him, tapping long fingers against its lips. Joe feels like he's being inventoried.

When it finally stands up, Joe raises his good leg to his chest and angles his heel. If it comes near him, he's going to slam his foot right into its solar plexus and let it know that he's not going to go along with whatever it has planned. He hopes to God that he doesn't look fucking terrified.

Green Eyes just looks at him like he's nuts. It seems to be considering something to say, but it doesn't. Joe stares at it and tries to keep his leg steady.

"How long do you think you can wait?" Green Eyes says, and sits back down.

"I'm pretty much set," Joe says. "I don't know why you want to waste your time here."

"That isn't my choice to make."

"So you just do whatever that fucker tells you to do?" Joe asks. "Way to have a mind of your own."

Green Eyes looks angry for a second and Joe grits his teeth. Then Green Eyes just says softly, "His master's voice." It leans its back against the wall. "Would you know anything about that?"

Joe doesn't say anything.

At some point, he falls asleep – he didn't want to let his guard down but just keeping his eyes open is starting to be exhausting, and at least it's better than lying there wondering about what Green Eyes is going to do to him. He still keeps jerking awake every ten minutes, it feels like (he doesn't know what time it is, there are no windows in the room). His hand is swollen and hot to the touch, blood throbbing around the puncture marks, and his shoulder's stopped throbbing but it's stiffened up and hard to move.

When he starts awake for the fifth time, Green Eyes is huddled in the corner, head resting on its hands. It looks like a kid gone to sleep. Joe looks around the room. It's taken everything that he could possibly use as a weapon away, and the walls are smooth and the floor is bare. Of course, the last time he tried to sneak up on Green Eyes went completely fucking badly, so he doesn't even know why he's looking for something to bash its brains in with.

The door is a couple feet away from him, but he doesn't know if it's locked or not. He doesn't know if he can be quiet enough or if the floor squeaks or if he's even strong enough to stand up. He doesn't know what's on the other side of the door.

When he tries to sit up, the world tilts alarmingly, and he's sweating and shaking before he even gets halfway up. He'd bet a hundred bucks that his hand is infected and pouring poison through his system (Pete warned him about this, told him about the things having mouths like cats', full of bacteria), and he needs to get out of here before he gets worse.

He's stiff and aching all over, and he doesn't want to even try to put weight on his ankle. He slowly rolls over onto his side, listening for a mattress squeak, and then hooks his good foot over the side and slides himself forward until he gets onto the floor.

He crawls on his belly like a snake, floorboards rough against his face, propelling himself forward with his good foot. Every movement seems to jar something that hurts and he's biting his lip to keep quiet. He tries to think of things that will distract him, counts the number of times he moves forward. The door doesn't seem any closer.

It hurts like hell, but he forces his arm up and drags himself forward by his nails. He's managed to be relatively quiet, at least, and when he sneaks a look back at Green Eyes every now and again it still seems dead to the world.

He's soaked in sweat and dizzy when he finally reaches the door. He pushes himself up onto his knees and touches the doorknob, pressing his ear to the wood to try to listen if something's outside, but he doesn't hear anything. It occurs to him that he doesn't know where he is or how to get back, even if he does manage to actually open the door.

He tries the knob. It's locked. He wants to hit something.

He's still on his knees, face pressed to the door, trying to remember all the times he nagged Andy to teach him about lock-picking, and he hisses under his breath.

He hears Green Eyes laughing. It sounds shrill and high-pitched, and more than a little crazy.

He tries to turn, tries to get up off his knees, but before he can there's an arm around his waist and one around his neck, lifting him off the floor and spinning him wildly. The walls all look the same, one big blur, and Joe thinks he's going to puke.

"Does he want to play, then?" Green Eyes says, still laughing. "Does he? Does he want to _play_?"

"Put me down, you fucker," Joe says, struggling as well as he can. "You lousy –"

Green Eyes just dumps him unceremoniously back onto the mattress, onto his bad shoulder. Joe screams.

"If you'd only be fucking reasonable," it says.

"You can't stay awake forever," Joe says, even though at the back of his head, there's the thought, _God, what if it_ can? "I've fuckin' done more with –"

"You won't be in a position to do anything now," Green Eyes says.

 _Oh, God,_ he thinks. It's pulling off its gloves, and its thumbnail is pearly and long. "No," Joe says, despite himself.

"Have you given me any other choice?"

Joe tries to push himself into the corner of the mattress. This shouldn't be much different than before, when it sunk its teeth into his hand, but there's something slow and sickening about the way Green Eyes folds its gloves and reaches for him. Joe kicks it in the stomach with his good foot.

The breath rushes out of it, but it only takes a millisecond for it to straighten and slap Joe's face, cold hand striking his cheekbone. It smiles. Its teeth are very long. "Save your strength."

"No," he says again. He's almost begging and it makes him sick, but he doesn't want this thing's teeth in him, doesn't want what happened to Pete to happen to him. Green Eyes straddles his legs. "No, please," Joe says. "Please."

It says nothing, just grabs his hand and turns it over. It runs a fingertip over the soft skin of his forearm. It feels like ice. "You still won't get anything," Joe says shrilly, "I don't care what you do, it won't –"

"Liar," Green Eyes says, and slices his arm open.

It's careful not to hit anything major; it stings like a paper cut and the blood doesn't come for a moment, but then Joe feels it burbling out of the cut, trickling down his arm. Green Eyes' pupils dilate like a cat's and it says quietly, "Yes."

"You don't have to," Joe says, "please, you don't have to do this, please don't –"

Green Eyes looks down at him. For a second, it almost looks sad. "My little love, do you really think I _don't_ have to do this?"

" _Please_ ," Joe says, but it just leans down and bites into his open vein.

It feels like he's being sucked inside out. It feels like losing everything. He tries to struggle but it keeps an arm across his throat and a firm grip on its legs, holding his hand like a lover while it sucks at the cut. Beyond the first sting, it doesn't really hurt, which feels worse; it just gives him time to feel weaker and weaker as the thing drinks.

He's barely conscious when it finishes. It covers the cuts with its fingers and touches Joe's bruised face carefully with its other hand. "You should sleep," it says. "We have all the time in the world."

Joe turns his face to the wall and passes out.

*****

He doesn't know if he's awake or not. His eyes are open, he thinks, but he's not sure where he is. He's looks at the walls around him and they sort of seem familiar, but he's not sure if he's just dreaming about the room.

"Hey," Patrick says.

Now he knows he's dreaming, or hallucinating. He turns his head and there Patrick is, sitting on the edge of the mattress with one foot tucked under him, leaning forward with his hands in his lap. He's wearing the same thing he was the last time Joe saw him: red shirt, dark jacket, dark hat. He's frowning slightly.

"Patrick?" Joe says, and his voice sounds young and small.

Patrick grins at him. "Who else would it be?"

"But – are you here? Or am I just completely fucked up?"

"I don't know," Patrick says. "Both? You do look pretty goddamn bad."

"I mean, sorry if I'm sounding stupid, but I was pretty sure you were, you know, dead."

"Well, I _am_ dead," Patrick says. "That's kind of obvious. You know how weird it is to get back to your place and realize that no one can see you?"

He reaches for Patrick's jacket and grabs onto where his shirt cuff should be, but it's like trying to hold onto the breeze; he feels coolness against his fingers but that's it. Patrick shudders. "Dude, don't do that."

Joe begins to cry. He doesn't know if it's exhaustion or fear or if he's just gone totally fucking nuts, but once he starts he can't stop. He tries to talk, pushing the words past the lump in his throat, trying to tell Patrick that he's sorry, that they should have found him, should have saved him, he's sorry, so sorry. The tears are streaking down his face and getting into his ears, and he's choking and coughing and not making sense even to himself.

"Joe," Patrick says. He frantically tries to swab at Joe's face with his sleeve, but it just feel like the wind in his face. "Joe. So totally not your responsibility. Come on, calm down, I suck at this. I'm here now, see? See?"

Finally, he manages to calm down enough so that he can try to wipe his face on his collar. "Ugh."

"I'm so totally the wrong person to be here," Patrick says. "Feeling better? I'll try to work on the reassurance skills, I promise."

"Yeah, I'm okay," Joe says. "I'm pretty sure I've lost my fucking mind, but I'm okay."

"Well, okay," Patrick says.

"One thing," Joe says. "Was that you with Pete's radio? And when Andy and I tried to move your guitars, was _that_ you?"

"I'm kind of limited in the stuff I can do," Patrick says. "The radio's mainly it. Something about the electricity or something. It's pretty easy to just slip into the wires. Let Pete know I'm around."

"He's not doing too good," Joe says. "When you –"

He sees something in Patrick's eyes that looks like pain. "I know," he says quietly. "I can't be there for him. But I can at least try." He picks at a spot on the mattress. "I've tried, you know. To materialize, or just say something, but it takes more energy than I've got. I think Pete heard something once. Maybe Andy, too, I can't be sure."

"I'm talking to you now," Joe says. "I mean, how's that work?"

"How am I supposed to know? It's not like I didn't try to talk to you before. Maybe you're just ready to hear me now?"

"Maybe I'm dead," Joe says.

"Not yet."

"Patrick, I don't know how to get out of this."

Patrick looks miserable. He's trying to touch Joe but his hands keep passing through. "I don't know how to get you out."

He doesn't have anything to say to that. He finally mutters, "Well, how about the guitars, can you explain how you did that?"

"Fluke," Patrick says. "I got pissed off when you moved them. Somehow that made it easier to come through. How many times have I told you not to touch my stuff? Jesus Christ."

"You weren't _using_ them, Patrick."

" _Don't touch my stuff_ ," Patrick says. His jaw tightens. Joe recognizes the warning signs – apparently being dead hasn't done any favors for Patrick's temper.

"Look, sorry," he says. "We didn't know."

"Yeah," Patrick mutters. He lies down beside Joe. "I really don't have any words of wisdom."

"I don't know what to do," Joe says. "I promised Pete, I promised both of them that nothing would happen –"

"You can promise a lot of things," Patrick says.

"I think I'm scared."

"It's not so bad, really," Patrick says. "Being dead. I thought it was going to be a whole lot worse. Nice surprise."

"Dude, you're a hallucination," Joe says. "Wouldn't you say anything that would make my subconscious feel better about this shit?"

"What do you want me to say? Would you believe me more if I showed up like the Ghost of Christmas Past or whatever?"

"Well, I don't know."

"Look, I'm just who I am," Patrick says. "That's not going to change."

"Patrick?" He's starting to feel less foggy, and the clearer he gets the fuzzier Patrick gets. He's not going to get this chance again.

"Yeah?"

"What made you decide to stick around? Not go check out heaven and whatever?"

"Who says there's a heaven?" Patrick says. "I'm still not convinced. At least this fuckin' place is familiar."

"Don't dodge the question, dude."

Patrick sighs. He sits up and looks down at Joe, already fading out, pale skin turning translucent. "Because I can't leave. Not until I know that Pete's okay."

*****

Joe feels weak and achy when he wakes up again. The room still looks the same. Green Eyes is sitting in its corner smoking a gold-tipped cigarette, watching him. Joe turns his head with an effort, half-hoping to see Patrick, but he isn't there and Joe feels numb.

"I didn't think you could smoke," he says to Green Eyes. His voice sounds croaky and thin, like he's been asleep all day. Maybe he has been.

Green Eyes blows a ring of smoke at the ceiling. "Affectations," it says. "It passes the time. Just to remind us of what it was like to be alive."

"Touching," Joe says.

Green Eyes just shrugs. It crushes the cigarette out and stands. Joe doesn't have the strength to move away. He shuts his eyes and tries to pretend he's gone back to sleep.

"Enough," it says. "I believe it's time you told me where the others are hiding themselves."

"I don't know where they are."

"One would think you could think up another story than just that one."

"Dude, why _should_ I tell you? It's not like you're going to let me walk on out of here if I said where they were."

"It's a matter of how long you want this to last."

"I don't want to be here at all."

"Obviously." Green Eyes comes and sits at the foot of the mattress. "We can end this now, or you can lie here in your own filth and infection until I get bored and test you out again."

"I don't care."

"Are you really so arrogant," Green Eyes says, "that you actually think you can save him?"

The words sting like a slap and if Joe had any strength at all left he'd belt the thing in the face. "I'm just doing my thing."

It says softly, "Your life makes no difference to him. Do you want to see him continue to fight his own nature and grieve for somebody else? There is nothing you can do that can touch that."

"Yeah, and what are you?" Joe says. "You take orders like some cheap-ass sidekick, you stay with me when you really just want to kill me, and then you _lecture_ me? Where's your asshole murdering monster –"

It holds up a warning hand and shakes its shaggy head. "I suppose you didn't know him, years ago. Eyes as dark as you've never seen." It smiles. "He was beautiful."

"You're shitting me," Joe says. "You can't be serious."

It leans down close to his face. He can smell his blood on its breath. "Haven't you always wanted to be there when the world burns to the ground?"

"No," Joe says. He suddenly feels tired. "Why do you care where they are? There's like fifty bazillion of you running around. What are two little dudes going to do to you in the long run?"

"Nothing," Green Eyes says crisply. "If I had my way, we'd move on. There's nothing for us here anymore. We're waiting for him."

For a second, Joe thinks it means Pete, but then it smiles a little sadly. "William never did learn how to accept a loss."

"Look, just leave me here," Joe says. "Go eat a rat or something. Our little secret? Come on. I'm nothing, dude."

"But I can't."

"You _can_."

"But he wants me to stay," it says, very reasonably.

"You don't –"

"I do what he wishes. Really, the only one who can end this is you."

"I don't know where they are," he pleads, and he's shaking. "I can't give you anything –"

"You have this chance," it says.

"You're still going to kill me."

"How that happens is up to you." It looks at him. "We can end this quickly, or you can see how long I can keep you alive until you give me what we need."

At the back of his head is the thought, _I promised, I_ promised, but he knows that sometimes that just isn't enough. He doesn't know if he's strong enough to hold out against more .

All he can do is hope that Pete and Andy can forgive him for this.

"If," he says, "If I say something, will you please make it easy on them?"

Green Eyes looks at him. "That isn't –"

"Don't hurt them," he says, and his eyes are full of humiliated tears and he's thinking, _I'm sorry, I tried, I'm sorry_.

Green Eyes nods.

"There's this storefront down by Columbus Park," he says. He picks the location randomly; hopefully it's far enough away from Pete and Andy to buy them some more time. "We've been hiding out – just, please –"

For a moment, he's scared that it doesn't believe him. But then it smiles and cups his cheek in its cold hand. "Don't cry," it says. "That's the right choice."

Joe shakes his head.

"If you'd like," Green Eyes says. "I can change you. Make you one of us. You won't regret a thing ever again."

He's been living with regret for so long that it feels like part of him, and for some sick reason he's grateful that it makes it easy for him to shake his head again and say, "Get it over with. I just want it to be over."

It shrugs noncommittally. "If you wish it," it says, and then its hand closes around his throat.

*****

Joe finds himself kneeling by the edge of the mattress, looking down at his body. He's bruised and swollen and his hand is various ugly colors and the size of a melon. He reaches out to touch it but his hand just passes right through.

"Sorry it had to happen like this," Patrick says behind him.

Joe looks around. Patrick is looking at his body, with the same mixture of regret and relief that Joe feels. "I let them down," Joe says. "I let Pete and Andy down."

"They won't see it that way," Patrick says. "I mean, you may not believe me, but you should."

"I just thought I was stronger," Joe says.

Patrick puts an arm around him. He feels solid and reassuring. "You _are_."

"Aw, fuck you," Joe mumbles, looking at his feet.

"See if I ever compliment you again," Patrick says. "Um. Are you, you know. Are you moving on? You can, you know."

He doesn't even need to look at Patrick to feel the hope and fear and sadness coming off of him. "Are you nuts?" he says. "Someone's got to keep an eye on things here."

Patrick lets his breath out and squeezes his shoulder. "It takes some getting used to," he says. "Being dead and all. But you actually do get used to it."

"Teach me about haunting shit."

"I don't _haunt_. I'm just kind of there. They just don't see me. They won't see you either."

"Not at first, maybe," Joe says. "But you know, I'm pretty hard to ignore."

"Yeah, maybe I should work more on being annoying, see if that works," Patrick says, and smiles. He turns around. "We should get going. There's a lot of shit to do."

"Whatever you say," Joe says, following. "Patrick? Um, I don't know where we are."

Patrick shrugs. "Yeah, you know what? It's pretty easy just to find your way back." And then he's heading out and Joe's following after him, out into the brilliant sunshine.


End file.
